Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Hecarim Support

First thing first: Now that I've reached Gold and finished my research (and finally uninstalled the damn thing), I ask for someone with a functional reddit account to post my League of Legends is Rigged page on www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends. Please link it in a comment and use something like "Proof that riot rigs ranked games for buyers" as title. I can't do it myself since my lovely EVE "fanbase" downvotes into oblivion any Reddit account I have with any any content I post.

Another note: I checked out some games and would appreciate further feedback on the "next game" post.

Back when I did the "warwick with smite support" to test the exploit against rigging, I noticed something strange: I could only use every second game for statistics, because the other half was "fixed". I mean after the team realized that I indeed go WW "support", they started swapping lanes or at least spells to restore the normal metagame. They rather took a lane they hated with a champion not really fit for it, than try something new.

But none of them beat something that happened the Monday before. I was autofilled support and as the game was a Sure Loss anyway, I figured that instead of using my daily free dodge (you get 5 mins lockout and 5LP loss for the first dodge to allow players avoid toxic teammates) I just do a second jungler to break the laning phase. Well, it didn't work:

Why? Because as soon as the real jungler realized that I'm really in the jungle, Hecarim just went to support, despite again and again I told him to go to the jungle and left mobs, even the Blue alone near him. But no, he was supporting and obviously failing doing it. The game was indeed a textbook sure loss, check out feeder Jarvan and the stupidly fed enemy Lux. But it was salvageable if the laning phase is broken fast enough. Of course it wasn't, since support Hecarim was good for nothing.

Anyway the point isn't that. The point is why does someone goes support Hecarim? I mean he was asked to swap with me during champion selection and said no, so he didn't want to support, even with a more suitable champion. He was the chosen jungler, he was a jungler champion with smite, he had a jungler item and he was repeatedly asked to go to the jungle where he belonged. Yet he went support. This isn't a "4-fun" M&S behavior, no way he had fun. This is the textbook social who feels responsible for "the team" and to do things "right", even against his own fun. Sure, he was doing it wrong, but I don't blame him believing that the normal setup is better than 2 junglers. In a fair game it is.

He was a wake-up call, he reminded me how much more important to fight sociality than rigged video games. That my next project must accept a game with its flaws and focus on the players instead of the game itself. If I suspect rigging, I either turn a blind eye and work around it or simply leave the game for another.

One of the things that stopped me from ever playing this game is the "5 man team but players are solo" aspect of it.

You can't have a coherent, win capable 5 man team without a leader. And you can't just ad hoc a leader each game.

So the team leader is the prevailing meta. If you know the prevailing meta, you know the strategy from the team leader, and you follow it. This guy seemed to be doing just that. Following the only consistent leader, the prevailing meta, and that says to always have one jungler and a support. When you added a second jungler and dispensed with support, you defied the "team leader's" orders.

No way was the guy going to listen to some punk and defy the real team leader! What reason does he have to think your strategy is any good?

If you really want to stomp the crap out of LoL and decisively show that the "50% win rate" is a matchmaking fix, form a 5 man team that always plays at the same time and use your current strategy, but have the team be in on it and know that you're the leader.

But to do that... it's no longer a casual game, more like a job. For the majority of players, the choice of "Play when I want, with only the meta as my boss, and accept a 50% win rate." and "Be told when to log in and play, and be told what strategy to use but get a higher win rate." is a losing proposition from the get go.

Now, there are coherent, pro teams with a leader. But it's basically their job.

Gevlon, LOL have no twich-based mechanics whatsover before You enter Pro-scene and even on Pro-scene many folks excels at other skills than mechanics.

The feeling that some players are soooo much better with clicking than You, comes from their better preparations. Let me explain.

You can modify bindings of Your keys to get:-Quick cast: Normally You have to confirm that You want to use a spell by clicking after choosing to cast it, quick-cast make You use spell IMMEDIATLy after clicking a button. This make people useing quick-cast appear to be much better at mechanics, because they cast their spells fluently and without lag.-Binding A-move-click to Left mouse button: This one is a lot tricker, because it demands from You to modyfi .jso file within game folder, to bind anything to left-mouse button. This allow for range champions, most notably ADC for "god-like" kiting, all they do is once click left mouse button, once right mouse button. Ofcourse there is a lot of room for improvment heres (the more rotations you do, the better You are), but to stomp most of the playerbase is absolutly all that is needed.-Memorizing combos and numbers: Simply by learning how much damage You do on all stages of the game, You gain abillity to "outplay" people, simple by knowing that even if they have more HP and Mana, You can kill them before they can respond. By doing that, You dont have to have "lighting reflex", You anticipate how the battle would go and enter it with a plan, that You execute. You bait important skillshots, remember that player X dont have flash, etc. You know what will happen and what they will use and act based on that and not on "click-fest".

To summarize, LOL is a lot more about strategy and game knowledge, than it is about reflex.

Now, about Riot rigging matchmaking system. I wont discuss Your methodology or results, rather will adress another problem. You are making more fuss about it, than You should. Think about it, buying skins and new champions can give only short-time gains, Riot cannot give permament advantage to skin-buyers, because eventuall they will stop buying. For scheme You suggested, they need to create relation: skin-buys = good time. This brings us to the fact, that there is finite position You can climb by simply buying skins, preferably gold division.

Beyond that, You will meet people that propably all buy skins and are creating a relativly small pool of people (couple of thousands, compared to millions). So we can easly assume, that buying skins is simply buying Your pass to play "with the cool kids". Sounds like ol-good premium membership system, that just have bad association.

Of course, You can say that this is un-ethical etc, but since when any industry related to leisure is honest? Socials loves being lied to. They pay Riot to feel good, they couldnt feel good knowing that they are lied to, thus they wont pay. What I am trying to say, its that Riot fault is that they sell such product (good feelings), but not the way they do it (its impossible to do it otherwise in their game).

What is left for level 3 and level 4 gamers? Well, You have really balanced game that You can influence through sheer power of Your will. You even explained and proved that 1 rational player can turn tides by his insight and without meddling into any social affair. I think this is great about LOL, that it is still competitive GAME and not TOY. Even if matchmaker matches me in bad games that are stacked against me, I can accept it, cause its a small price, for having a game without straight gold-ammo, corrupted devs ruining it or martini-sipping lawyers that stalls games for everyone to run his RMT schemes.

In LOL You can focus on getting better and turning tides, in EVE You constatly have to save this game from istelf, in other games... well, its lucky if You get any realy PVP at all.